Montana dog owner who lost $500 to hungry pet is reunited with money

Sundance, the golden retriever who ate five $100 bills, rejects the taste of the check his owner Wayne Klinkel received this week to replace of the $500 that once ended up in the dog's stomach. (Eliza Wiley/AP)

The expensive taste of one man's dog has finally paid off.

It's just too bad it wasn't first in the form of cold, hard change.

Advertisement

Nearly a year after Wayne Klinkel's golden retriever gobbled up $500 in paper bills, the Helena, Mont., resident has been reunited with his currency.

One of the five $100 bills recovered from Sundance's waste. (Eliza Wiley/AP)

After briefly leaving his curious 12-year-old pooch named Sundance in his car last Christmas, mistakenly within reach of six paper bills, the dog's owner returned to find all of the bills except one gone.

The lone bill Sundance left behind was the $1. The five other $100s were either shredded or completely gone.

Refusing defeat, Klinkel then dedicated himself to following his four-legged friend around with a pail.

Whenever the dog stopped to do his business, Klinkel was there.

Seen in April, Klinkel puts on gloves at his home to demonstrate how he recovered five $100 bills after his golden retriever ate them. (Lisa Kunkel/AP)

Claiming to have previous experience with his dog eating paper bills, he told the paper he knew the dog would eventually release the scraps and they could be cleaned for potential reassembly.

Sure enough he says the paper bits immerged and he was able to wash them, again and again, before laying them out like a jigsaw puzzle.

Not letting his work go to waste he then taped the bills back together before sending them off to the Federal Reserve in April while admittedly not knowing what to expect to hear back.

To his utter surprise, however, on Monday afternoon an envelope from the federal government arrived at his door.

Sundance's owner says he washed the remnants of the bills and taped them together before sending them to the Treasury Department. To his happy surprise, he was reimbursed. (Eliza Wiley/AP)

Opening it up was a crisp, clean check for $500. Printed across the bottom it read: MUT.CURR.REFUND."

"It was great to get the check after all the crap I went through," Klinkel told the paper.

As for Sundance, his days of gobbling items beyond food may not be over, but Klinkel says he learned his lesson the hard way and won't be leaving anything of such monetary value around him again.